We consider the local well-posedness of the Cauchy problem for the gravity water waves equations, which model the free interface between a fluid and air in the presence of gravity. It has been known that by using dispersive effects, one can lower the regularity threshold for well-posedness below that which is attainable by energy estimates alone. Using a paradifferential reduction of Alazard-Burq-Zuily and low regularity Strichartz estimates, we apply this idea to the well-posedness of the gravity water waves equations in arbitrary space dimension. Further, in two space dimensions, we discuss how one can apply local smoothing effects to further extend this result.